from the dangerous-games,-played-out-behind-closed-doors dept

For years now, we've been warning about the problematic "ISDS" -- "investor state dispute settlement" mechanisms that are a large part of the big trade agreements that countries have been negotiating. As we've noted, the ISDS name is designed to be boring, in an effort to hide the true impact -- but the reality is that these provisions provide corporate sovereignty, elevating the power of corporations to put them above the power of local governments. If you thought "corporate personhood" was a problem, corporate sovereignty takes things to a whole new level -- letting companies take foreign governments to special private "tribunals" if they think that regulations passed in those countries are somehow unfair. Existing corporate sovereignty provisions have led to things like Big Tobacco threatening to sue small countries for considering anti-smoking legislation and pharma giant Eli Lilly demanding $500 million from Canada, because Canada dared to reject some of its patents noting (correctly) that the drugs didn't appear to be any improvement over existing drugs.

The US has been vigorously defending these provisions lately, but with hilariously misleading arguments. The White House recently posted a blog post defending corporate sovereignty, with National Economic Council director Jeff Zients claiming the following:

ISDS has come under criticism because of some legitimate complaints about poorly written agreements. The U.S. shares some of those concerns, and agrees with the need for new, higher standards, stronger safeguards and better transparency provisions. Through TPP and other agreements, that is exactly what we are putting in place.

There's something rather hilarious about saying that there needs to be "greater transparency" and promising that the secret agreement you're negotiating behind closed doors and won't share with the public has those provisions in them somewhere.

The leaked text would empower foreign firms to directly “sue” signatory governments in extrajudicial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals over domestic policies that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms that foreign firms claim violate their new substantive investor rights. There they could demand taxpayer compensation for domestic financial, health, environmental, land use and other policies and government actions they claim undermine TPP foreign investor privileges, such as the “right” to a regulatory framework that conforms to their “expectations.”

The leaked text reveals the TPP would expand the parallel ISDS legal system by elevating tens of thousands of foreign-owned firms to the same status as sovereign governments, empowering them to privately enforce a public treaty by skirting domestic courts and laws to directly challenge TPP governments in foreign tribunals.

Existing ISDS-enforced agreements of the United States, and of other developed TPP countries, have been almost exclusively with developing countries whose firms have few investments in the developed nations. However, the enactment of the leaked chapter would dramatically expand each TPP government’s ISDS liability. The TPP would newly empower about 9,000 foreign-owned firms in the United States to launch ISDS cases against the U.S. government, while empowering more than 18,000 additional U.S.-owned firms to launch ISDS cases against other signatory governments. (These are firms not already covered by an ISDS-enforced pact between the United States and other TPP negotiating governments.)

As for all that "transparency" that the White House promised? Yeah, don't count on it:

As revealed in Section B of the leaked text, these tribunals would not meet standards of transparency, consistency or due process common to TPP countries’ domestic legal systems or provide fair, independent or balanced venues for resolving disputes. For instance, the tribunals would be staffed by private sector lawyers unaccountable to any electorate, system of precedent or substantive appeal. Many of those involved rotate between acting as “judges” and as advocates for the investors launching cases against governments. Such dual roles would be deemed unethical in most legal systems. The leaked text does not include new conflict of interest rules, despite growing concern about the bias inherent in the ISDS system.

Contrary to claims from the Obama administration that the TPP’s investment chapter would somehow limit the uses and abuses of the controversial ISDS regime, much of the leaked text would replicate, often word-for-word, the terms found in past U.S. ISDS-enforced agreements. However, some terms would widen the scope of domestic policies and government actions that could be challenged before extrajudicial tribunals, without offering meaningful new safeguards for those policies.

The basic concept behind early ISDS/corporate sovereignty provisions may have made sense -- in which companies that were afraid to invest in developing nations out of fear the government would come in and seize their factory or whatever -- but expanding it to cover basically all international trade, while the definitions are interpreted to mean companies can challenge any law they don't like in front of a set of private judges (who also work for those same companies in other cases) is ridiculously problematic.

And, once again, we see why the USTR absolutely refuses to be transparent about this by releasing this information publicly. It knows that such a deal would be bad for the American public, so it keeps them secret until nothing can be done. I guess if you're undermining democracy by giving corporations power over lawmakers, you might as well go all the way and hide your proposals from the voting public at the same time.

from the and-the-revelations-just-keep-on-coming dept

There have been questions of when (not if) the next "Ed Snowden" situation would show up. There certainly have been a few recent leaks that appear to have been from folks other than Snowden, but they've mostly been one-off leaks. However, this morning, Al Jazeera is claiming that it got its hands on a huge trough of spy documents, in the form of cables from South Africa's spy agency, the State Security Agency (SSA), and it will begin reporting on what's in those documents, in collaboration with reporters at The Guardian:

Spanning a period from 2006 until December 2014, they include detailed briefings and internal analyses written by operatives of South Africa's State Security Agency (SSA). They also reveal the South Africans' secret correspondence with the US intelligence agency, the CIA, Britain's MI6, Israel's Mossad, Russia's FSB and Iran's operatives, as well as dozens of other services from Asia to the Middle East and Africa.

The files unveil details of how, as the post-apartheid South African state grappled with the challenges of forging new security services, the country became vulnerable to foreign espionage and inundated with warnings related to the US "War on Terror".

As Al Jazeera points out, this is not "signals intelligence" (SIGINT) material, but rather "human intelligence" (HUMINT) of the kind normally done by the CIA, rather than the NSA. It's about spies on the ground -- and also, according to Al Jazeera, their humdrum daily office existence. Honestly, it almost sounds like the plot of a bad sitcom: come work at a premier national intelligence agency... and bitch about the lack of parking:

At times, the workplace resembles any other, with spies involved in form-filling, complaints about missing documents and personal squabbles.... One set of cables from the Algerian Embassy in South Africa relates to a more practical concern. It demands that "no parking" signs are placed in the street outside. The cable notes that the British and US embassies enjoy this privilege, and argues that it should be extended to Algeria as well.

Whether or not this latest leak turns up anything more interesting than parking disputes, it is worth noting that another trove of intelligence documents have leaked...

from the that's-one-way-to-put-it... dept

Attorney General Holder raised some eyebrows earlier this week when answering a question about his Justice Department's notorious crackdown on leaks, and by extension the press, most notably saying this about its notorious pursuit of New York Times reporter James Risen, while claiming the DOJ did nothing wrong:

If you look at the last case involving Mr. Risen, the way in which that case was handled after the new policies were put in place [is] an example of how the Justice Department can proceed.

The District Sentinel aptly took apart most of Holder's comments, and they also provoked a stinging rebuke from Risen himself last night on Twitter. However, I think the facts of Risen's case deserve a closer look to see just how unbelievable Holder's statement is.

Let's recap: since the very start of the Obama administration (read: for SIX years), the Justice Department was trying to subpoena James Risen. It fought for him to testify at a grand jury of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, which he refused to do, and when they were rejected by the court, it fought to have him testify in Sterling's trial. They fought Risen on this all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Also, keep in mind, while the "new" media/leak guidelines that Holder bragged about are certainly a step forward, the old guidelines that applied to Risen's case should have protected him just the same from the start—if they were actually enforced. He doesn't get to pretend the preceding five and a half years didn't happen just because he stregthened the Justice Department's rules after public protest.

The case cost Risen and his publisher an untold fortune in legal fees, dominated his life, took away from time he could've spent reporting, and likely cost the taxpayers millions of dollars.

Along the way, we found out that the government had spied on virtually every aspect of James Risen's digital life from phone calls, to emails, to credit card statements, bank records and more. (By the way, we still have no idea how they got this information. That's secret.)

The Justice Department argued in court that not only was there no reporter's privilege whatsoever -- either embedded in the First Amendment or in Fourth Circuit common law -- but also that journalists protecting sources was analogous to protecting drug dealers from prosecution.

After all this (along with a large public outcry), the government decided to drop its pursuit of James Risen. And of course were able to easily convict Jeffrey Sterling anyways, using evidence gleaned from digital surveillance.

Now the Justice Department wants a pat on the back. While it is unequivocally excellent news that Risen will not be forced into jail, the DOJ's behavior in this case was and still is deplorable. It has done damage to long-term press freedom rights that will be very hard to undo, and the idea that this should be looked at as a "model" for future leak investigations is troubling to say the least.

from the and-creates-a-streisand-effect dept

Yes, of course, Disney is trying to keep the lid on the new Star Wars film and is extra careful to try to stop any leaks coming out about the new film, but this seems like a pretty expensive and silly way of doing things. The company's expensive lawyers at Latham & Watkins have sought a subpoena to serve on ImageShack because someone -- a user with the name "Darth_Simi" posted what appears to be a single blurry cropped still image from the film (shown here as a thumbnail):

The focus, obviously, is on trying to track down the leaker:

And while I recognize that Disney thinks it's incredibly important to figure out who leaked that single blurry image, this whole thing seems questionable for a variety of reasons. First, it seems highly likely that the blurry, cropped single frame image is not, in fact, infringing because it's fair use. It is a very tiny portion of the copyrighted work, it was not used for commercial reasons and certainly isn't going to impact the market for the film. As such, the attempt to subpoena ImageShack to identify the uploader should be denied, as it's not infringement.

Second, if Disney really wanted to stop such things, going to court seems like a fairly dumb way to do so. As the Hollywood Reporter story above notes, the image only had about 6,000 views when its story on this image went live. By the time I saw it, the number of views of the image had doubled, and it wasn't that long after the story had gone up. Disney clearly isn't using copyright law to stop this particular use, but rather as a separate tool to try to track down a leaker.

Third, it's hard to see how this effort could possibly be worth the money that Disney is paying its expensive lawyers for. Preparing the filing and going to court isn't cheap. And all over what, exactly? A tiny fair use, blurry, cropped frame from a movie that is only likely to get fans more excited to see the actual film?

Oh, and just to make this clear, we believe that our use of the thumbnail above is fair use for the same reasons that the original posting on ImageShack was fair use, and we'll add that, in this case, it's more so because we're commenting on the image itself in a press report -- and the image is newsworthy because of Disney's lawyers' own actions.

from the action,-reaction dept

We already wrote about how Senator Richard Burr has demanded that the White House return all copies of the full, unredacted CIA Torture Report, which Senator Dianne Feinstein distributed to various department heads last month. As we noted in our article, this seemed like an effort to stuff the full report down the memory hole to make sure that no one could ever do anything with it at all and to make it more difficult to access in a series of FOIA lawsuits. Those lawsuits are demanding the report, as well as the internal Panetta Review that is supposedly the smoking gun, involving an internal CIA analysis that mostly agrees with the Senate Intelligence Committee's analysis in the full report.

Reporter Jason Leopold of Vice News (and one of the people suing the government, under FOIA, for the documents) has some more details about Burr's action, including a copies of the letter [pdf] Burr sent the White House, and the letter that Feinstein sent in reply. As Leopold notes, Burr's decision seems specifically designed to try to do a legal two-step to make the document immune from FOIA lawsuits:

By advising the White House to cease entering the full torture report into an executive branch system of records, Burr is saying that the document is a "congressional record," which is exempt from FOIA, as opposed to an "agency record," which is subject to the provisions of the law.

Feinstein's response shows that she disagrees, and that the report can properly be handed over to the Executive Branch. The reason for the letter, obviously, is for it to be used in killing off the FOIA attempts, and the DOJ wasted no time in making just that argument:

Tonight, the government filed a response in our long-running lawsuit and asked a judge to dismiss our case. A CIA lawyer said in a 31-page declaration that the redactions in the executive summary were justified and the Panetta Review is properly classified and should not be released. The government also responded to the ACLU's FOIA lawsuit for the full torture report. The government said the full torture report is not an agency record subject to FOIA, it is a congressional record. The government cited Burr's letter to support its case.

Congress retains control over the Full Report for at least five reasons. First, the
conditions under which the report was created reflect that SSCI as a whole asserted complete
control over not only drafts, but also the final product. Second, throughout the years-long
process of creating and finalizing the Report, both SSCI and the CIA handled the Report in
accordance with SSCI’s instructions and strict limitations on access. Third, SSCI voted, in
accordance with Senate Rules, to seek declassification and release only of the Executive
Summary, Findings and Conclusions – not the Full Report. The then-SSCI Chairman’s decision
to provide the Full Report to certain Executive Branch agencies for nonpublic use does not
amount to a Committee decision to seek to declassify and release the Full Report. Fourth, the
current Chairman of SSCI has reiterated SSCI’s intent to retain control of the Full Report.
Finally, the defendant agencies have treated the Full Report, received in December 2014, as a
congressional record, sequestering it in secure storage space appropriate to its classification and
carefully limiting its dissemination and use. Because the Full Report remains a congressional
record as opposed to an agency record, this Court lacks jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ FOIA claim
seeking its release, and plaintiffs’ claim should be dismissed under Rule 12(h)(3) or 12(b)(1).2

This is not all that unexpected, even if it's fairly ridiculous. However, it's possible that the whole thing could backfire badly. Feinstein knew what she was doing in distributing the report to a number of people within the administration. While all of whom have access to it have the proper clearance, at least some have to agree that this report is an important historical document, detailing incredible misdeeds by the CIA -- and some of them may view it as important to have that information shared with the public to make sure such events never happen again.

Senator Burr's rather obvious move here to demand all copies be "returned" is seen by many as an attempt to bury the report entirely. As Senator Ron Wyden points out, returning the report would "aid defenders of torture who are seeking to cover up the facts and rewrite the historical record." Given that, it seems more likely that at least someone with access to the document is going to realize that this important review of history is at risk of being shredded. Hopefully there is someone in the government with the courage to stand up and get a copy out to reporters in some manner or another, before Burr has a chance to succeed in wiping it off the face of the earth.

from the funny-how-that-works dept

The James Risen saga is basically over, but ended in a bizarre way. As you hopefully recall, this case goes back many years, and involves the DOJ trying to convict Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA official, of leaking info to Risen. However, Risen has made the compelling case that the DOJ's desire to involve him was an attempt to punish him for earlier work he'd done exposing questionable practices by the intelligence community -- and specifically to force Risen to give up a source, so that future whistleblowers can't trust him. This backfired massively, as Risen fought this entirely, promising never to give up his source, even as the issue went up the Supreme Court (which refused to hear the case), but technically ended with a court saying Risen had to give up his source. Risen still insisted that he would not, and he'd go to jail if he had to. This put Attorney General Eric Holder in a bit of a bind, as he'd promised not to put reporters in jail. Thus, last month, Holder blinked, saying the DOJ would not force Risen to give up his source. However, he was still supposed to testify, just not on that.

Mr. Risen’s under-oath testimony has now laid to rest any doubt concerning whether he
will ever disclose his source or sources for Chapter 9 of State of War (or, for that matter, anything
else he’s written). He will not. As a result, the government does not intend to call him as a
witness at trial. Doing so would simply frustrate the truth-seeking function of the trial.

This is true irrespective of whether he is called by the government or the defense—he is unavailable to
both parties. The law makes clear that testimony that is not subject to meaningful
cross-examination regarding non-collateral matters is antithetical to the purpose of a trial and
should be excluded.

And, specifically, please oh please, don't let Sterling's lawyers mention anything about all of this to the jury:

Moreover, since Mr. Risen is not available as a witness on the central issue in the case, the
defendant should be prohibited from commenting on Mr. Risen’s failure to appear or suggesting
that the government has failed to meet its burden because it did not call him as a witness.

In response, the judge refused the DOJ's request to declare Risen "unavailable" for both sides, and everyone's figuring out how to proceed, with Sterling's lawyers saying that they want to use earlier Risen testimony about how he had multiple sources for his book.

Either way, the DOJ comes out of this looking terrible, and James Risen has made it clear that, if you're a whistleblower, you certainly can trust him not to reveal who you are to the government...

from the will-it-happen? dept

In a surprising development, the New York Times reported late Friday that the FBI and Justice Department have recommended felony charges against ex-CIA director David Petraeus for leaking classified information to his former biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell. While the Times does not specify, the most likely law prosecutors would charge Petraeus under is the same as Edward Snowden and many other leakers: the 1917 Espionage Act.

It remains to be seen whether Petraeus will actually be indicted (given how high-ranking government officials so often escape punishment), and the decision now sits on Attorney General Eric Holder's desk. But this is a fascinating and important case for several reasons.

First, all of Petreaus's powerful D.C. friends and allies are about to be shocked to find out how seriously unjust the Espionage Act is—a fact that has been all too real for many low-level whistleblowers for years.

By all accounts, Petraeus's leak caused no damage to US national security. "So why is he being charged," his powerful friends will surely ask. Well, that does not matter under the Espionage Act. Even if your leak caused no national security damage at all, you can still be charged, and you can't argue otherwise as a defense at trial. If that sounds like it can't be true, ask former State Department official Stephen Kim, who is now serving a prison sentence for leaking to Fox News reporter James Rosen. The judge in his case ruled that prosecutors did not have to prove his leak harmed national security in order to be found guilty.

It doesn't matter what Petraeus's motive for leaking was either. While most felonies require mens rea (an intentional state of mind) for a crime to have occurred, under the Espionage Act this is not required. It doesn't matter that Petraeus is not an actual spy. It also doesn't matter if Petraeus leaked the information by accident, or whether he leaked it to better inform the public, or even whether he leaked it to stop a terrorist attack. It's still technically a crime, and his motive for leaking cannot be brought up at trial as a defense.

This may seem grossly unfair (and it is!), but remember, as prosecutors themselves apparently have been arguing in private about Petraeus's case: "lower-ranking officials had been prosecuted for far less." Under the Obama administration, more sources of reporters have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act than all other administrations combined, and many have been sentenced to jail for leaks that should have never risen to the level of a criminal indictment.

Ultimately, no one should be charged with espionage when they didn't commit espionage, but if prosecutors are going to use the heinous Espionage Act to charge leakers, they should at least do it fairly and across the board—no matter one's rank in the military or position in the government. So in one sense, this development is a welcome one.

For years, the Espionage Act prosecutions have only been for low-level officials, while the heads of federal agencies leak with impunity. For example, current CIA director John Brennan, former CIA director Leon Panetta, and former CIA general counsel John Rizzo are just three of many high-ranking government officials who have gotten off with little to no punishment despite the fact we know they've leaked information to the media that the government considers classified.

So hopefully Eric Holder does the right thing and indicts Petreaus like he has so many others with far fewer powerful connections. As Petraeus himself once said after CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou was convicted for leaking: "There are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws."

But if Petraeus does get indicted, perhaps we should start a new campaign: "Save David Petreaus! Repeal the Espionage Act!"

from the doj-made-a-lol dept

On Friday, we wrote about reports that the DOJ had decided not to force Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen to reveal an intelligence community source for a story he wrote years ago -- though he still may be subpoenaed and put on the stand about other stuff (and it's not entirely clear if he'll agree to do that). However, there was a bit of irony in all of this: the DOJ leaked this information to the press. Risen's lawyer told reporter Jana Winter that they hadn't received any official word when the stories started appearing in the press, and there hadn't been any official government filing. The NY Times reports the same thing. Instead, it was just reported in the press as "according to a person familiar with the decision."

In other words, it "leaked" from the DOJ.

Or, more specifically, it leaked from the DOJ that it wouldn't seek to put a reporter in jail for refusing to say who leaked other information to him, as it still looks to put that original leaker in jail.

The entire situation was driven by the DOJ's attempt to totally crackdown on leaks that the administration doesn't like. As we've discussed, the Obama administration has (like no other administration in history) declared war on leakers and whistleblowers. It has used the Espionage Act (which is supposed to be used against spies) more than double all other Presidents combined to prosecute those involved in leaks, including journalists. The administration has set up an "Insider Threat Program" and produced a document comparing leaks to "aiding the enemies of the United States."

And, yet... when the government leaks out information that makes the administration look good, suddenly no one has a problem. For years, even when there are leaks that might be said to "compromise national security," so long as they make the administration "look good" no one cares. There are no investigations or freakouts or threats to put reporters or leakers in jail.

And thus, here we are, with the final chapter in the ridiculous Risen intimidation saga involving the DOJ leaking to the press the information that it won't seek to put him in jail for not revealing who leaked him information.

I'm guessing that there will be no investigation at all into who "leaked" this particular information.

from the well-played dept

Freedom of information requests are a powerful way of finding out things that governments would rather not reveal. As a result, requests are often refused on a variety of grounds, some more ridiculous than others. The Netzpolitik blog points us to a rather unusual case concerning a request by the politician Malte Spitz for a letter from the Chief of Staff of the German Chancellery to members of a commission investigating intelligence matters. The request was refused on the grounds that the document was already freely available (original in German):

The information you requested may be obtained free of charge on the Internet by anyone, in a reasonable manner. The letter from the Chief of the Federal Chancellery, Federal Minister Peter Altmaier, to the chairman of the first committee of inquiry of the 18th legislature, Professor Dr. Sensburg, is publicly available and published in full at the following link:

The Netzpolitik link included there leads to an article that a few weeks earlier had not only leaked the document requested by Spitz, but also noted wryly that the letter from Altmaier threatens anyone leaking documents with legal action.

The German bureaucracy should be applauded for taking the adult view that once a document is leaked, it is publicly -- and officially -- available. This contrasts with the childish attempts by the British government to pretend that Snowden's leaks never happened, and its refusal even to pronounce the name of some of the surveillance programs he revealed.

from the showdown dept

Last week, we noted that Attorney General Eric Holder was hinting that the DOJ was near "a resolution" with reporter James Risen -- the NY Times reporter who the DOJ has been harassing and trying to force to give up sources. In a recent interview, Risen makes the rather compelling case, that this effort by the DOJ was never about actually solving any sort of crime (the DOJ knows who did the leak), but rather about totally discrediting and/or punishing Risen for some of his other investigative reports. If the DOJ can undermine the ability of Risen to protect sources, he loses many sources.

Federal prosecutors obtained 100 blank subpoenas last week for use in the upcoming trial of a CIA officer accused of leaking top-secret information to New York Times reporter James Risen.

The move clears the way for the Justice Department to proceed with a new review of whether Risen should be subpoenaed to testify at the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, the CIA employee accused of disclosing details of a CIA effort to set back Iran's nuclear program.

Some of this is procedural. The DOJ put some new rules in place since the last subpoena, and so there's an argument that in order to review the possibility of a new Risen subpoena, the DOJ basically has to do all the initial legwork, and then the DOJ (and Holder in particular) will "review" under the new rules before determining whether to try this silly process again or to back down. Of course, that seems silly. It seems much more viable to just come out and say that they won't subpoena reporters like this and make that a clear and stated rule. But the DOJ seems unwilling to give up this harassment and intimidation tool.

In the end, it seems likely that Holder will fold, but this game of chicken, putting the threat of jail time on Risen to see who blinks first, is really quite disgraceful by the DOJ. So far, Risen has given no indication he intends to comply -- and has held to the same story all along, that he will not give up his sources under any circumstance. Holder, on the other hand, has promised not to put a reporter doing his job in jail. If both men live up to their word, Holder is the one who needs to blink, and it's pretty stupid to go through this whole charade in the meantime.